Back to Work - Bill Clinton [34]
In contrast to the main debt drivers in the past thirty years, tax cuts and national security spending, most of the increase in debt over the next thirty years will come from much more spending on programs progressives support as forthrightly as the antigovernment forces back tax cuts for higher-income Americans: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs. That means that if Democrats want to both preserve the programs and restore economic growth, they have to develop a plan to reduce their projected costs and to increase investments and tax incentives in areas vital to a quicker economic recovery and to our long-term prosperity. The arithmetic trumps ideology.
We have three choices on the debt. We can live with it, with higher interest rates, slower growth, lower incomes, less economic independence, and the loss of our global leadership. Or we can do what the antigovernment forces want, attacking the problem with spending cuts only, drastically reducing the federal government’s role in providing for future growth through education, research and development, modern infrastructure, and economic development; for a better quality of life in clean air and safe air travel, health-care and income security for the elderly; and for America’s continued world leadership. If we do that, we’ll lower our future economic growth, increase poverty and our already high level of income inequality, reduce our quality of life, and force other countries into alliances with nations that may not share our values and interests. Or we can act to strengthen both the economy and the government’s role in creating a better future by cutting spending and raising revenue in a fair, effective way. That’s what the president and most Democrats want to do. That is the course I favor. According to most polls, a big majority of Americans favor it too.
If you’re an antitax absolutist like Grover Norquist, who works hard to get every candidate for Congress and the presidency to sign a pledge never to raise taxes, this kind of approach, indeed the idea of any more taxes, is heresy. There’s only one way taxes can go—down. That means we can’t cut oil-company tax breaks to finance energy independence with homegrown resources and new technologies. It means Congress can never decide that it’s not right for a successful hedge fund manager’s ordinary income to be taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate, a lower rate than the fund’s secretaries and other nonprofessional staff pay.13 This makes sense if you think all government activity is harmful and the United States would do better with a philosophy grounded in “you’re on your own” rather than “we’re all in this together.”
Before we get to the most urgent topic—how the United States can get out of the current crisis, create more jobs quickly, and lay the foundation for long-term prosperity—let’s look at where we are today compared with our recent past and compared with our wealthy competitors. After all, we’ve been going down the antigovernment road for thirty-one years now, except for my two terms and President Obama’s first two years. Let’s see what the evidence shows us about how that “on your own” strategy is working for us and look at how other nations with very different policies are doing.
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1 These percentages refer to the percentage of our debt held by the public and foreign governments, not the Federal